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The forty-second volume of the collected writings and correspondences of the American statesman, ambassador, and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin

In the spring of 1784, Franklin, John Jay, and British negotiator David Hartley exchanged ratifications of the definitive British-American peace treaty. Hoping for permission from Congress to return home, Franklin settled his accounts, negotiated a French consular convention, headed a royal commission to investigate animal magnetism, wrote several scientific theories, and published his well-known satire about rising with the sun. As the volume ends, Thomas Jefferson brings news of a diplomatic assignment that would keep Franklin in France for another year.

Ellen R. Cohn is senior research scholar in the department of history at Yale University. She lives in New Haven, CT.